I am but a humble traveler, blessed beyond what I could ever ask for.

On Skyscrapers, and My Visit to the Eiffel Tower

There was a time when one of the manifestations of man’s search for greatness was how tall he can go with his structures. Not accepting defeat after one skyscraper from another side of the world dares go up, there was this unrelenting drive to prove that it is he who can reach closer to the sky and stand tallest — perhaps brought by the technological discoveries of the time, the sprouting of the then great minds in architecture and engineering, in the case of real estate it was a need, and in some cases purely competition.

During my trip to Paris, one of the highlights was visiting Eiffel Tower, knowing that although not tall in today’s standards, it was at a time the tallest man-made structure in the world.

The best part about the structure for me personally though was being able to see Paris from the top of it, and it was a beautiful sight.

(Whenever my travels take me to a skyscraper nowadays, I can’t help but ask the question, how much higher can our technological and engineering advances take us? Will we ever stop reaching up, or will we continue pushing and stretching an unknown limit?)